You may get a shot at the Overwatch beta this weekend

For people who want to be in the Overwatch closed beta but aren't, well, things could be better. The sense of exclusion, compounded by the knowledge that thousands of people are getting better at the game while you haven't even played it, can be frustrating. And there's very little you can do about it, either. Isn’t that devastating? Yes, sometimes life can be almost criminally unfair.

"Since this is a stress test, we're primarily interested in technical feedback, like how Overwatch runs on players' systems, critical bug reports, and other game-impacting problems," Blizzard wrote in its announcement. "One of our goals is to push our hardware to the limit, so players shouldn’t be surprised if they experience performance issues or run into unexpected downtime—that's all part of the process."

It kicks off 9am PT April 15 through 9pm PT April 16 (that's 2am AEST April 16 through 2pm April 17 in Australia). There's a patch rolling out to coincide with the beta, which can be seen in detail over here.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.